Love Like That
by heisalonetonight
Summary: "Aren't you upset Ladybug doesn't share your feelings?" Marinette Dupain-Cheng asked, because Chat Noir was there, sitting on her balcony, watching over Paris-with-a-view. Chat Noir shrugged. He said, "I don't really do love like that." / One-shot. Marinette asks Chat why he has never been upset she couldn't offer more. Marichat, sort of. Short and sweet.


"Aren't you upset Ladybug doesn't share your feelings?" Marinette Dupain-Cheng asked, because Chat Noir was there, sitting on her balcony, watching over Paris-with-a-view. Adrien liked to come here when he had a spare minute, as Chat Noir. Paris from this balcony really was beautiful, and the whole rooftop - the whole street - smelt like warmth, and love, and the bakery.

Chat Noir shrugged. "I don't really do love like that." It was very much a non-issue to him. His eyes didn't leave the cityscape, except when he realised she was watching him - Chat turned, so she knew she'd been caught. Marinette's blush was immediate, and very pretty. She averted her eyes. Still grinning, Chat went back to Paris.

"It's just," Marinette ventured, "it's been - you know, it's been years. Almost half a decade, Chat Noir, and all she ever does is tell you she doesn't feel the same way."

"I know." He didn't, in the least bit, seem put off by it.

"So why aren't you…?" shouldn't he be? Every time Marinette had had to tell him no, he had only shrugged. It had never been a huge deal to him - it had never been something to trip up their relationship. Heck, for a few months there she'd gone overseas, without Chat Noir, to do some fashion-world thing Adrien had specially set up for her; she couldn't tell Chat where she was going, or that she was going. All he'd known was that she was okay, but unavailable for a little while. And that had been fine, for him. He hadn't been thrown off at all. He hadn't asked what she was doing. He hadn't insisted she stay close enough to be on call. He'd been… used to it. All the time, every time, he just seemed used to it.

The Chat Noir on her balcony sat himself down, so that he could poke his legs through the railing, there, at the edge - then he flopped down, spread-eagled, against the flat rooftop. Clearly, he was considering. Chat thought about it. But he'd meant what he'd said, really: he just didn't do love that way. It seemed very strange to him that other people chose to, actually - he didn't understand it. It didn't look a lot like love to him. It was sort of sad, actually, because everybody deserved to love someone, and sometimes he questioned whether some of this city really knew how.

"I don't know," he said.

Chat Noir was always like this. Almost everything Marinette Dupain-Cheng knew about him, she had learned up here on this balcony, during his late-night visits, post-patrol. Ladybug wasn't allowed to know any of this stuff; she wasn't allowed to ask; she wasn't allowed to let him tell her. But here, she was just Marinette, and so Chat spoke, and spoke, and spoke, and shared all of these things about his life like he was choking on them, on this once-only-one-off-chance to have someone, somewhere, witness who he was. He'd learned to swallow that, around Ladybug. It scared Marinette, actually, because she had wholly believed that he'd settled - she'd really, truly thought that Chat was happy sharing as much as he did with her. Until this, until nights like these had become a regular thing, Marinette had believed Chat Noir did not yearn, like this, still. Where had he learnt to hide something like that - wanting to be cared about - so well? So well as to hide it from his partner?

Chat said, "My father is usually pretty distant." (Marinette thought, _Chat has a father?,_ because she had largely been under the impression he was an orphan. He only ever spoke of his mum in the past tense - and his father had never come up before.) "I guess I'm used to it. And I don't mind it, Princess, that's just how she is. They are. I don't love like that."

"Like what?"

"Like they owe me something." He rolled over onto his stomach. Had to pull his legs out of the railing so he could do it, for a second, but then they slotted back through. His chin was resting in the crook of his arm, there, like it was a pillow, so he could look at her. "My love isn't conditional. They don't have to show me they love me back. They don't even have to." Ladybug didn't. "Ladybug is -"

What? What could he say about her?

Chat said, "Everything. She's my best friend. I know what it's like to feel like you've got to prove something to be worth it -"

"Worth what?"

"Loving. And she doesn't. Nobody I love does. I don't love like that, I don't know if it really… counts, if you only love people when it's convenient." No. Adrien - Chat - did not love like that. "Love is something you give, you don't need to take anything back. Don't you think?"

Marinette watched him. Her eyes were very round. There was some breath in her - air which she had inhaled, definitely, for sure - which had sort of just gotten stuck, there, in her throat.

Chat Noir's ring beeped. "Whoops," he sighed, with a glance in its direction - Chat Noir clambered to his feet: "That's my cue to leave, Princess. Sorry to cut our conversation short."

This was too quick. He was leaving too quickly. Marinette shot to her feet, because he was suddenly leaving, just like that, and she hadn't known this about him, or that he thought Ladybug did not love him (and she did - really, she did, in the way best friends loved one another, maybe not romantically but she did and that _mattered_ \- and something else had flipped in her chest, tonight, her heart had squeezed, and now he was just -) - and he was just - _leaving_!

Chat Noir kissed the back of her hand. "Thanks for listening to me ramble. I promise, your knight in shining armor will be way better conversation next time I come hang out. I'll catch you later!"

"Chat Noir -"

But he was off, over the edge of her balcony, and away, and the dark of the night swallowed the blonde boy in the black suit, whole.

Marinette did not know why her heart felt so... fluttery.


End file.
